English for Masters. Маркушевская Л.П - 24 стр.

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Университет ИТМО | Санкт-Петербург

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Text 7
Exercise 1. Read and translate the words paying attention to the meaning of the
prefix “semi”.
Semiconductor, semiconductive, semiautomatic, semicircle, semifinal, semiperiod,
semisymmetric, semi-transparent, semi-reflecting.
Read the text and put the paragraphs in the right order. (The first and the last
ones are in the correct place.)
HOW THE INTERNET BECAME A BIG BOY
Part 1
1. In the summer of 1968, experts at the RAND Corporation, America's foremost
Cold War think tank, were considering a strange strategic problem. How could the
US authorities successfully communicate after a nuclear war? No matter how
thoroughly a network was armoured or protected, its switches and wiring would
always be vulnerable to bombs. An attack could reduce any conceivable network to
tatters.
2. The invention of the mailing list followed naturally. This was an ARPANET
broadcasting technique in which an identical message could be sent automatically to
large numbers of network subscribers. Interestingly, one of the first really big mailing
lists was "SF-LOVERS," for science fiction fans. Discussing science fiction, on the
network was not work-related and was frowned upon by many ARPANET computer
administrators, but this didn't stop it from happening.
3. By the second year of operation, however, an odd fact became clear. ARPANET's
users had warped the computer-sharing network into a dedicated, high-speed,
federally subsidised electronic postal service. The main traffic was not long-distance
computing, but news and personal messages.
4. And how would the network itself be commanded and controlled? Any central
authority would be an obvious and immediate target for an enemy missile. RAND
mulled over this grim puzzle in deep military secrecy, and arrived at a daring
solution. In the first place, they would design a network with no central authority.
Furthermore, they would design it to operate while in tatters.
5. This excited and intrigued many, because it did sound like a theory for an
indestructible network. In the autumn of 1969, the first node was installed in UCLA.
By December 1969, there were four nodes on the infant network, which was named
ARPANET, after its Pentagon sponsor (the Advanced Research Projects Agency). An
added bonus was that scientists and researchers could share one another's computer
facilities from a great distance away. This was a very handy service, for computer
time was precious in the early '70s. In 1971 there were fifteen nodes in ARPANET;
by 1972, thirty-seven nodes. And it was good.
6. The principles were simple. All the nodes in the network would be equal in status,
each with its own authority to originate, pass and receive messages. The messages
themselves would be divided into packets. Each packet would begin at some

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